Alliance Battles are 12 versus 12 (3 parties of 4) PvP battles that determine control of the Kurzick-Luxon border in Cantha. Kurzicks wear their traditional blue color and appear as blue dots on the map while Luxons wear their traditional red color and appear as red dots on the map.

To access Alliance Battles, you must enter a guild hall that's allied with either faction. If you don't have a guild, a guest pass to another guild's hall will suffice. Talk to the Alliance Battles representative, the Kurzick Kommandant or Luxon Navigator, to be zoned to the respective outpost of the current arena.

You must form a party of 4 level 20 characters to enter. You are not required to team up with members of your guild or alliance.

Before battle, you will be joined randomly with two other parties, forming a team of 12. During the battle itself, skills that affect "party members" will only affect the 4 players of your party.

There are 5 different maps. The map in which the fight takes place depends on the red/blue border line of the faction war. Maps that are deep into Luxon or Kurzick territory are heavily weighted in their favor.

There are seven control points on the map. They will be placed on the map closer to the faction that is losing the overall border war; they are the same distance from both sides only when the Kurzick/Luxon border evenly divides the Echovald Forest from the Jade Sea.

Capturing control points

Each control point starts the battle in neutral status; they are captured by standing on or next to the shrine:

If one team has more characters nearby, then the control point starts to shift in the direction of that team.

The speed of transition is one pip for each extra member that the team has nearby. e.g. if there are four members from Team A and 1 from B, the rate will be 3 pips.

The control point's ownership will not switch if both sides have the same number of players.

If one team already owns the shrine, the opposing side has to neutralize it before it can start to take ownership. Neither side receives points for neutral shrines.

Allied NPCs are counted, including those that guard shrines and any that follow the team.

Both the Kurzick and the Luxon base are guarded by invulnerable Base Defenders that can kill players in a single hit, which prevents the enemy team from capturing the base.

Bug. If the both teams reach 500 points at the same time, the win defaults to the Kurzicks regardless of the final score, because Kurzick points are distributed first. For example, if the score is 499 each and the Kurzicks own 1 flag, but the Luxons own 6, when shrine points are awarded, the Kurzicks will reach 500 first (and win), even though the ending totals will be Kurzick: 500, Luxon: 505.

Both sides also receive 10 Imperial faction for each point equal to their end score. This reward is increased by the map's Underdog bonus. (Neutral maps provide no bonus while maps deep into enemy territory provide an extra 50%; see Arenas (above) for details.)

Skills which profit from deaths, like the wells and minions of the Necromancer, are very effective in alliance battles due to the many corpses available.

It is important to spread out early in the match. Having 4 players on each side portal and 4 out front will maximize the capping speed at the nearest shrines on Etnaran Keys and Grenz Frontier. This is sometimes called "4-4-4".

Consider bringing running skills as there is a great deal of running between control points. The mobile nature of the battle also makes stationary skills like wards, wells and spirits less useful.

If your team holds the resurrection orb shrine, carrying the resurrection orb will give you "two lives" since dying will cause you to drop it on your body, resurrecting you, nearby teammates and NPCs (the orb will then disappear so you can't drop it repeatedly to make yourself immortal).

It is not an uncommon occurrence for two teams to collide and form a mob. A mob can kill anything in its path but it is a very inefficient way to cap shrines. It is a bad idea to try to fight the mob, instead, spread out and cap the shrines the mob is leaving undefended. Conversely, if your team ends up as a mob, and the other team is avoiding the mob, try to get your party to break away.

Having the mission (U) map open and fully zoomed out allows you to see which team holds the control points.

It is beneficial to have some Area of effect damage source in the team so that dealing with enemy NPCs is quicker reducing time for capturing as well.

It is generally a bad idea to keep attacking a lonely "decoy" character like a 55 Monk, tanking warrior or a terra tank elementalist since unless your team has certain skills to quickly crack the highly defensive build, it could waste precious minutes that your team could have used to run and/or cap a shrine.

Using a longbow or flatbow you can kill any of the NPC shrines (except the warrior shrine) without them fighting back.

On maps where a particular faction has an advantage on the current map (Grenz Frontier and Ancestral Lands for Kurzicks, or Etnaran Keys and Kaanai Canyon for Luxons), this side tends to become overcrowded, resulting on long queues to enter battle. You can avoid long queues by fighting on your "underdog" maps which also yields higher rewards, but, of course, these are harder to win.